JesterX
November 2, 2014, 12:10am
41
Fuzzy_wuzzy:
Perhaps he should post some cost benefit analysis to the amount spent on fighting poverty since 1962 and current rates of poverty in the US. He should also post how much the US currently spends per year on welfare and current poverty rates. He may also wish to post poverty rates during the 1950’s and whether these rates were falling or rising. Im willing to believe the War on Poverty brought short term benefits. However, I have serious doubts about the benefits long term and the causation suggested in the OP figures. I have done a quick search on historic poverty rates. Some interesting results. What is noticeable is that 9 out of 10 pages dealing with post war poverty in the US cut off at 1959 or 1960. Im guessing two reasons for this; more accurate figures from the early 1960’s - which suggests the possibility of them being inaccurate, or, the poverty rates were also falling during Eisenhower’s Presidency.
Same point… If you don’t like the data keep demanding more until you get the data that shows the way you feel. Conservatives, I’ve learned are ALL about their feelings.
Unless I am mistaken we are in the Great Debates section of Straightdope. It’s nice to see this section of the forum is now a place where legitimate questions are ridiculed. I can understand such ridicule if my queries were unreasonable, but I really don’t believe they were. It’s not unreasonable to question the efficiency of a programme that was mean to cost relatively little - and I assume be temporary for most - as a way of lifting people out of poverty. That the same families who were in poverty in 1960 are largely the same familes in poverty today, only now in ever greater numbers. Pointing all this out is extremely unfair on my part.
Anyway, thank you for your contribution.
JesterX
November 2, 2014, 9:56am
43
Fuzzy_wuzzy:
Unless I am mistaken we are in the Great Debates section of Straightdope. It’s nice to see this section of the forum is now a place where legitimate questions are ridiculed. I can understand such ridicule if my queries were unreasonable, but I really don’t believe they were. It’s not unreasonable to question the efficiency of a programme that was mean to cost relatively little - and I assume be temporary for most - as a way of lifting people out of poverty. That the same families who were in poverty in 1960 are largely the same familes in poverty today, only now in ever greater numbers. Pointing all this out is extremely unfair on my part.
Anyway, thank you for your contribution.
Do you have a cite to show these are the EXACT SAME families that were in poverty in 1960 that are in poverty today, as opposed to different families cycled in?
Shodan
November 2, 2014, 1:27pm
44
My, what a telling riposte.
Regards,
Nice way of massaging my statement. I said these families were largely the same not exactly the same. This is a subtle but important difference in wording. I will assume this was an innocent mistake on your part not a sleazeball tactic of attempted petty point scoring on an internet forum.
My cite is my own neighbourhood and experience if you must ask. My neighbourhood is not in the US but the UK. However, the generational poverty of the same families is here. Im fairly certain it is the same in the US as it is in most of the Western world.
JesterX
November 2, 2014, 4:51pm
46
Fuzzy_wuzzy:
Nice way of massaging my statement. I said these families were largely the same not exactly the same. This is a subtle but important difference in wording. I will assume this was an innocent mistake on your part not a sleazeball tactic of attempted petty point scoring on an internet forum.
My cite is my own neighbourhood and experience if you must ask. My neighbourhood is not in the US but the UK. However, the generational poverty of the same families is here. Im fairly certain it is the same in the US as it is in most of the Western world.
Ok, I’ll use YOUR word, “largely” the same. My mom spent some time on welfare. I’ve been back to my old neighborhood a few times since I’ve left. Almost NONE of the people or the families I grew up with are there. Last time I went years ago I didn’t recognize anyone except the person I went to visit. I’m not saying all of those people got rich and moved to the upper west side (I live in NYC) but it’s a good bet that, like my mom, those that were on welfare are not anymore.
So I’m afraid I can’t use your cite.
As George Will so aptly put it; “…spending at least $6.6 trillion on poverty-related programs in the four decades since President Johnson declared the “war on poverty” is not “nothing.” In fact, it has purchased a new paradigm of poverty.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/03/AR2006030301756.html
That new paradigm of poverty is what we are faced with today and it is the direct result of the war on poverty.
Because George Will says so? I am unpersuaded.
I am inclined to side with Shodan as the OP clearly has no points to defend.
Edwards has a 1930s paradigm of poverty: Poor people are like everyone else; they just lack goods and services (housing, transportation, training, etc.) that government knows how to deliver. Hence he calls for a higher minimum wage and job-creation programs. And because no Democrat with national ambitions will dare to offend teachers unions, he rejects school choice vouchers and says this: “Give working parents who are poor housing vouchers so they have a chance to move into neighborhoods with better schools.”
The 1930s paradigm has been refuted by four decades of experience. The new paradigm is of behavior-driven poverty that results from individuals’ nonmaterial deficits. It results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores – punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc. – that are not developed in disorganized homes.
I think there is something to this. I’m not sure what more there is we think the government can do to combat poverty.
Fuzzy_wuzzy:
Im guessing the article is not to be fully trusted:
“Johnson also signed the Gun Control Act of 1968, which upset conservatives who believed that it was a massive conspiracy to take away their only defense from hippies who hid in the bushes and randomly attacked you unless you had a gun 24/7.”
And how is that any reason not to trust the article?
Shodan:
And now you know -
The rest of the story.
Regards,
Oh, don’t talk to me about Paul Harvey . . . :mad:
JesterX:
Par for the course that conservatives generally credit Bush’s tax cuts for the uptick in the economy shortly after they went into effect. Except that the economy was ALREADY recovering from the slight recession at the end of Clinton’s term without them. But try to tell a conservative that the tax cuts were negligible and they’ll curse you out. Ask them to prove causation between the tax cuts and the upsurge they’ll say it was self-evident.
Both sides cling to their ideals no matter what and economics is sufficiently complex that there are always factors in it where neither side’s philosophy can be truly proved or disproved.
From TVTropes (seriously):
The nice thing about Mathematics and other Hard Sciences is that there is no question that 2 + 2 = 4.
The complicated thing about Sociology and other Social Sciences is that there’s room for interpretation and debate note Are ‘2’ and ‘2’ satisfactory evaluations based upon sound criteria? Is there a margin for error? Are ‘+’ and ‘=’ the correct operations to be accounting for? Is the product of the process, 4, the problem or the solution? Are we even asking the right question in the first place (or is someone out to prove something)? And, why ask at all when the answer is so obvious? This could be an indication that someone else should be chosen to ask the questions in future - they’re wasting our time - though then again, this happened back in '07 and no-one batted an eyelid. We should really look into that…
The horrifying thing about Economics is that both of these are true.
This violent collision leaves a few absolutes to take refuge behind, and a wide open mine field for catastrophic assumptions and mistakes, and prime Flame Bait. There are a fair number of widely divergent economic schools of thought, each with a reasonable claim to accuracy, and each which believes the others to fail economics forever. The major difference between this schools is in what they decide to grossly oversimplify in their bid to understand something. This is probably one of the reasons Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science”. (And few agree on that term… Economists will claim their science isn’t dismal, and many other fields will claim it’s not a science. The dance goes on.) note Actually the reason why Carlyle called the economics “the dismal science” was because John Stuart Mill and his fellow economists supported the equality between all men and the abolishment of the slavery, and Carlyle was afraid that the economics would cause the decadence of the society.
Not even you believe that.
:dubious: Nor that, even assuming that by “less” you meant “more.”
No.
No, we know it exists; but we also know it’s bullshit.
As I said in the OP, see also .
In the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level since comprehensive records began in 1958: from 17.3% in the year the Economic Opportunity Act was implemented to 11.1% in 1973. They have remained between 11 and 15.2% ever since.[7]
The ‘absolute poverty line’ is the threshold below which families or individuals are considered to be lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health. Poverty among Americans between ages 18–64 has fallen only marginally since 1966, from 10.5% then to 10.1% today. Poverty has significantly fallen among Americans under 18 years old from 23% in 1964 down to less than 17%, although it has risen again to 20% in 2009.[8] The most dramatic decrease in poverty was among Americans over 65, which fell from 28.5% in 1966 to 10.1% today.
In 2004, more than 35.9 million, or 12% of Americans including 12.1 million children, were considered to be living in poverty with an average growth of almost 1 million per year. According to the CATO institute, since the Johnson Administration almost $15 trillion has been spent on welfare, with poverty rates being about the same as during the Johnson Administration.[9] A 2013 study published by Columbia University asserts that without the social safety net, the poverty rate would have been 29% for 2012, instead of 16%.[10] According to OECD data from 2012, the poverty rate before taxes and transfers was 28.3%, while the poverty rate after taxes and transfers fell to 17.4%.[11]
The OEO was dismantled by President Nixon in 1973, though many of the agency’s programs were transferred to other government agencies.
According to the “Readers’ Companion to U.S. Women’s History”,
Many observers point out that the War on Poverty’s attention to Black America created the grounds for the backlash that began in the 1970s. The perception by the white middle class that it was footing the bill for ever-increasing services to the poor led to diminished support for welfare state programs, especially those that targeted specific groups and neighborhoods. Many whites viewed Great Society programs as supporting the economic and social needs of low-income urban minorities; they lost sympathy, especially as the economy declined during the 1970s.[12]
United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Jimmy Carter, Joseph A. Califano, Jr. wrote in 1999 in an issue of Washington Monthly that:[13]
“In waging the war on poverty, congressional opposition was too strong to pass an income maintenance law. So LBJ took advantage of the biggest automatic cash machine around: Social Security. He proposed, and Congress enacted, whopping increases in the minimum benefits that lifted some two million Americans 65 and older above the poverty line. In 1996, thanks to those increased minimum benefits, Social Security lifted 12 million senior citizens above the poverty line … No Great Society undertaking has been subjected to more withering conservative attacks than the Office of Economic Opportunity. Yet, the War on Poverty was founded on the most conservative principle: Put the power in the local community, not in Washington; give people at the grassroots the ability to stand tall on their own two feet. Conservative claims that the OEO poverty programs were nothing but a waste of money are preposterous … Eleven of the 12 programs that OEO launched in the mid-'60s are alive, well and funded at an annual rate exceeding $10 billion; apparently legislators believe they’re still working.”
Well I think they should attack the lower classes, er, first with bombs, and rockets destroying their homes, and then when they run helpless into the streets, er, mowing them down with machine guns. Er, and then of course releasing the vultures. I know these views aren’t popular, but I have never courted popularity.
cornopean:
As George Will . . .
Not much point in reading past that point, is there?
As I said in my first post, “Now all you have to do is prove causation. For each of those programs you listed.” You have not done that.